A video released last Friday of Coquitlam RCMP officers trying to arrest an elderly couple is awkward, embarrassing and represents a bit of a black eye for the force.
But people shouldn’t be too quick in labelling the less-than ideal response to the couple’s lack of co-operation during the incident at a Coquitlam hotel as police brutality.
The police could have done a better job in de-escalating the situation. There could have been injuries and it was more luck than skill that the incident didn’t end more seriously.
Many people will jump to the defence of the police, who were obviously dealing with folks who were uncooperative. It’s likely a fact of life in the force that people don’t want to be taken away in a police car but when the people are older and English is not their first language, problems can obviously arise.
Coquitlam is a multicultural city and there will be times when police will have to deal with people whose first language is not English, so they need a strategy for handling tense moments.
The RCMP have worked hard to become more diverse and so there are benefits to having police officers who can speak multiple languages and who may be able to assist.
Instead, we have a video showing a takedown of two older people where translation services may have calmed the situation.
Still, there may be something we don’t know from seeing this video. As the city’s mayor pointed out on Facebook, the RCMP are well trained and may have had their own reasons for handling the situation the way they did.
It’s likely the New Westminster Police and B.C. RCMP investigations will get to the bottom of this, although it is not known whether the results will be made public.
We hope the result will be recommendations that will aid the police in defusing similar situations in the future.
